Disheartened athlete looking for motivation

catie224

Where to begin. I've spent the last hour reading other people's posts, encouragement, challenges, and success stories, and am hoping to make my own. I am currently a sophomore in college, and my weight/fitness level is extremely important to me. I was always active and healthy growing up, and started competing in track when I was thirteen. My sophomore year of high school is when I first remember noticing how I looked and counting calories. It wasn't long until I knew the fat, sat fat, carbs, fiber, protein, and calories of everything I ate. I actually was not trying to lose weight though, just make sure that I was healthy overall. When I had my annual check-up that year, I was 5'8'' and weighed around 125. I didn't own a scale, and wasn't concerned with the numerical weight until my doctor told me that I should gain weight. For the rest of high school I struggled with body image issues and obsessively counted calories, but continued to succeeded in track and was a two time all American by graduation. I had gained about ten pounds since sophomore year, but it was primarily in muscle which didn't phase me seeing as I didn't own a scale.

I started college, and although the transition was rough (as I'm sure it is for most people) I was soon back to running forty miles a week and happy with where I was. Although I was not competing for my school, I had been running road races in central park and enjoying the challenge of essentially coaching myself. Then, the week before I was supposed to compete in my first half-marathon, I didn't fully pivot on a step in dance class, dislocated my knee cap, tore my meniscus, and tore the cartilage behind my knee cap. Go figure that it was the last day of class, and the final step of that dance. I was on crutches for the first time in my life, and once the doctors saw my MRI results I was scheduled for arthroscopic surgery to remove the torn/floating cartilage and tidy the meniscus tear. In early May I had the procedure done, and was looking forward to a speedy recovery and return to running.

As the summer progressed, however, I continued to have pain under my knee cap, and finally returned to my orthopedic surgeon. He took another MRI of my knee, which showed that because my knee cap was so loose (a combination of genetics and the effects of dislocating it in April) that it was tracking poorly, and continuing to sand-paper away at the area where the cartilage had been torn. I knew in the bottom of my heart that I was going to need another surgery; the question was which kind. I could have another arthroscopic surgery to tighten up my knee cap, or could have open knee surgery to place embryonic cartilage cells behind my knee cap, in the damaged area. I did, and will always, trust my doctor, and so we decided to attempt arthroscopic surgery, with my go ahead to open up my knee in the operating room if the cartilage was too badly damaged to leave alone. However, the fall semester of college had started, and because I'm a theater major in an extremely active program I had to wait until winter break to have my surgery. My knee was stable enough to maintain until then, but not enough to run, and waiting for the surgery depressed me; I began to slowly put on weight--one of my biggest fears--as running was pushed off another four months.

Two days before Christmas of 2010 I had open knee surgery. It went well; my knee cap was tightened and new cartilage cells placed, but open knee surgery meant months of recovery. I spent two months in a full leg brace, relatively inactive for the first, and fighting to keep up in theater school the second. I've now been in a smaller knee brace for a few weeks, doing physical therapy twice a week, and am just starting to use the stationary bike. I have completely lost motivation though, after almost a year of coping with this injury. I have fallen victim of depressive binge eating (combated with hardly eating regular food on those days) and often do not feel like doing anything. I find myself regretting that one misstep I took over and over, thinking off all the things I could have done to avoid it, and asking myself how I went from a confident, health, happy athlete to the person I see in the mirror today: twenty pounds heavier, sad, unmotivated.

Well, that changes today. I could spend my entire life regretting that moment in dance class, but the truth of the situation is that I could have dislocated my knee cap at any point in my life, and so at least I did it at an age where recovery is much easier. I will be twenty in a little over a month, and I don't want to leave my teenage years thinking that I'm ugly, or a failure, or full of regret. I don't want to need to look in the mirror to be happy, and I want to run that half-marathon. I am currently 5'9'' and around 150 lbs, and my goal is to lose about twenty over the next couple of months. As always, taking the first step is the hardest thing though, and so if anyone is going through something similar and has any advice or would like to work together, that would be fantastic. I hope to return to running soon, and then be able to inspire people who experience what I've been through. Thank you for sticking with me through this super long post!!

-Catie

trud72

hi ya,belive me 20lb is nothing compared to some people on here,,it should be pretty easy to do when you are fully mobile again,
the only things i can really suggest are routine(stick to it) and try to get someone to do it with it will spur you on quite a bit...
hope this is of some help
t

ManX_84

Hey Catie... Don't worry, the length of your post was only slightly short of a novel! haha I tend to do the same thing when I have things on my mind, so it's nothing new to me. Now, while I might not have had the same types of things happen to me, I can relate to being injured and having body image and confidence issues, especially throughout my late teen years and into my early 20s. I just turned 27 on Tuesday and even though I'm in the best shape I remember being in, I'm still not where I wanna be. I've been getting in my head a lot about it recently which has caused to make more impulsive choices with food... not good. I don't get down about it though, I know I'll make mistakes here and there, I'm only human.

Injury wise, I've had a lot of them. I've never damaged anything quite to the extent as your knee, but I've bruised ribs, hyper extended my knee, severely sprained both ankles and probably broke my left one the last time it happened. The one thing that's funny in an ironic way is, when I was younger, maybe 12 or 13, I was kind of wimpy when it came to injuries. I would always 'baby' myself because I was afraid to hurt myself more... then for whatever reason, I became super stubborn. Perhaps it was that I hated being told not to do something, so when I hurt my ankle the first time and the doctor told me to stay off of it for 10 days, i didn't listen. By the second day, I was outside shooting baskets. I was still limping, hobbling around but that was the part of my life that I just toughened up I guess you might say. A week later, I had bought a brace and was playing basketball again just 2 weeks after my injury, 4 days after he had said to even walk on it. Needless to say, now I have two braces that I have to use when I play competitively.

Weight wise, I've always been 'average' size, well at lest what used to be average. A little soft, but fit enough to run up and down the court during a few pick up games of basketball. I'm 6'0 and 183 right now but I've been as high as 235 less than 2 years ago and 210 just barely over a year ago. my weight has been a roller coaster since I was about 17. My issue was that I never really took the time to study and understand what foods were good for what and why I should eat them. It was common sense to me that fruits and veggies were good, but I didn't really know the real reasons why. I have a much better understanding now which is probably why I have my weight under control now and have since last summer.

The great thing is that you don't have to 'workout' to lose weight. If you eat the right things and stick to your caloric needs to lose that weight, it will happen. The working out is more about keeping your body fit and strong which leads to true fitness rather than just being thin. A suggestion I'd make is to not get too caught up on the number because you'll find that no number is the right one, even if its the one you said you wanted. Instead, focus on how you feel mentally and physically. This should be easier for you since you were very fit before... you have a frame of reference for how you should feel in both aspects. You also seem like someone who hasn't ever given up when they wanted something and I don't see you starting now.

You said you run and have done or wanna do a marathon... well relate your weight and health to running a marathon. The beginning is about finding your pace and getting into a rhythm right? Same with eating and working out. Once you get into that 'zone' which almost all athletes know about, things just seem to flow and your momentum keeps carrying you towards your goal. The closer you get, the more you want to just go and the less you want to give up because you are so close... maybe even anxious. (I know I've gotten that way recently. I'm so close to where i wanna be. Just a couple more months!) Just like you have to train for a race... you have to train for the goal you set when it comes to weight or overall fitness.

I am just getting ready to start another round of P90X and have about 8 to 10 pounds to lose yet. I'd be up for teaming up on this with you if you want. Maybe once I know a little more about you, I'll be able to relate and motivate better... if you're up for it, just let me know!